Anne Neville: Richard III's Tragic Queen
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The ‘what-ifs’ of history can become fascinating but dangerous dead ends. However, so long as they are considered in a similar vein to the best examples of historical fiction, they can add to the understanding and interpretation of enigmatic individuals. We cannot know what direction English history would have taken if Richard had not been killed at Bosworth. We can only speculate about what sort of king he would have proved to be and whether he would have remarried, and to whom. No doubt he wanted an heir. Would he have got his way? At what cost? Forty years before the marital trials of his great-nephew Henry VIII, would Richard’s quest for a son have proved as tortuous as he sought increasingly young wives in the interests of Yorkist propagation?
14
Eclipse
1485
Strange shadows from the midst of death
Are round our being strangely cast:
Thus the great city, tower’d and steepled,
Is doubly peopled,
Haunted by ghosts of the remembered past.1
Early in 1485, Richard was thinking about his successor. After the death of Edward, he had initially nominated Clarence’s son as his heir but, considering the boy’s perceived feeble-mindedness and youth, then declared in favour of another of his nephews, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln. John was the son of his sister Elizabeth, who had married the second Duke of Suffolk. By 1485, her eldest son was already twenty-two, a far more viable successor than the ten-year-old boy. Richard appointed him President of the Council in the North and King’s Lieutenant in Ireland. He also made provision for his illegitimate son, John of Pontefract, who was assigned the captaincy of Calais on 11 March 1485. In the grant, the ‘well-beloved’ youth is described as having a ‘disposition and natural vigour, agility of body and inclination to all good customs’, which promised ‘great and certain hope of future service’.2 Given his loss of Prince Edward, it is not impossible that Richard was lining up his bastard as his spare heir. He was certain now that he would never have another child by the queen, whose condition was weakening every day.
One grey morning, Anne was dressing in her chamber when one of her ladies-in-waiting made a startling admission. The rumours regarding Richard and Elizabeth had not abated; now, in fact, they were joined by another, stating that Anne herself was already dead. Perhaps she had appeared less and less in society since the New Year, taking meals in private and resting in the company of her women. She may well have had a spell in bed, her absence giving rise to speculation. Croyland and Vergil report that she was distressed by the news and went straight to her husband, in tears, her hair loose, asking why he should ‘determine her death’. Richard, in turn, reassured her, ‘kissing hir [and] made awnswer loovingly comfortyng hir, bad hir be of good chere’. Holinshed stated that the slanders had originated with the king, as a ruse to scare the queen to death; ‘to the intent that she taking some conceit of this strange fame … in … sorowfull agonie’ and puts Richard’s faith in the rumours to cover up his dastardly intention, if Anne ‘should fortune by that or anie other waies to lease her life’. As may be expected, Shakespeare developed this idea of a whispering campaign, designed to tip an already terminally ill woman prematurely into her grave. In Act 4, Scene 2 of Richard III, he instructs Catesby to ‘rumour it abroad, that Anne, my wife, is sick and like to die’. His motive? ‘I must be married to my brother’s daughter, or else my kingdom stands on brittle glass.’ A scene later, the audience learns the queen had ‘bid the world goodnight’, not even meriting a death on stage. She returns as a ghost for a brief riposte on the eve of Bosworth, directing her prayers in Tudor’s favour against the man with whom she ‘never slept a quiet hour’. Anne Neville was dead and the audience believed Richard had killed her.
In 1699, the fashion for ‘improving’ Shakespeare saw poet laureate Colley Cibber produce his own version of Richard III. In a scene invented for the play, he portrays Richard and Anne at the point in which their marriage breaks down. His Anne cannot help but compare her second husband with her first, considering matrimony to be a ‘blessing to the virtuous’ rather than the ‘scourge of our offences’ it has now become. Now her life ‘yields only sorrow’, with Richard the ‘constant disturber’ of her rest, as she, ‘night after night, with cares lie waking’. She asks him, ‘Have I deserved this usage?’ To which he replies, ‘Out-liv’d my liking,’ now that he ‘lov’d another’. Anne then invites him to kill her, which he declines, as ‘the meddling world will call it murder’. She wishes she could ‘with deadly venome be anointed’ but is done away with by Richard’s ‘physician’. The 1995 McKellen screenplay portrayed Richard encouraging the queen’s developing depression and drug addiction, to the point at which she overdoses, either by her own hand or the administration of another. In the original version, Shakespeare’s Anne also wishes for her own death, through the symbolic medium of Coronation:
I would to God that the inclusive verge
Of golden metal that must round my brow
Were red-hot steel to sear me to the brain.
In March 1485, Anne’s actual death was to prove hardly less dramatic or mysterious. In fact, all that can be stated for certain is that she died, in the Palace of Westminster, on the 16th of that month. Lisa Hilton states that, given the rumours, Anne’s ‘death was all too convenient’ but her illness may well have triggered the gossip, rather than been their intended result. Subsequent sources recorded that she passed away during an eclipse of the sun. The symbolism of this, as an indicator of the demise of the Yorkist dynasty, with its motif of the sun in splendour, would not have been lost on her contemporaries. Fabyan related that it was bad rumours arising from the death of the queen that caused Richard ‘to fall in much hatred of his subjects’, although Vergil gave a non-committal account of her end: ‘The quene, whether she wer dispatchyd with sorowfulness, or poyson, dyed within few days after, and was buryed at Westmynster.’
So how exactly did Anne die? Tuberculosis (TB) and cancer have been suggested as the most likely causes, which could fit with theories regarding her low fertility. Richard’s detractors favoured the poison theory and some of his contemporaries believed that enough to repeat it. In an essay of 1980, The Death of Queen Anne Neville, Anne F. Sutton explores how the circumstances of Anne’s final illness are consistent with the diagnosis of TB. Firstly, there is the suddenness of her death. According to the Croyland Chronicle, she showed no signs of illness through 1484, but fell ill soon after Christmas, which allows for a rapid decline over a period of twelve weeks. Although there are many different kinds of tuberculosis, the most common, pulmonary TB, is an infectious bacteria spread through coughs and sneezes. It is not inherited but can easily thrive in shared living quarters, suggesting that Isabel Neville’s premature death at twenty-five may not just have been a result of childbirth. The symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis can include fever, breathlessness, night sweats, coughing up blood, weakness, weight loss and anorexia. Perhaps this may explain the physical similarity between the eighteen-year-old Elizabeth of York and Anne, a woman a decade her elder, who had borne a child. Secondly, a severe shock, such as the death of her son, could also trigger a latent infection to become a full-scale disease. Physicians of the medieval period did not understand the illness. Twelfth-century Hungarians asserted that it was caused when a dog-shaped demon ‘occupied’ the body and began to consume the lungs. She may have been prescribed garlic and the poisons mercury and arsenic. Perhaps these accelerated her demise. Thirdly, her symptoms would have been considered contagious and caused sufficient alarm for Richard’s doctors to advise him to keep his distance. Anne’s death, amid the prophetic eclipse, can never be completely resolved. Tuberculosis may fit the known facts but those facts are limited. There may have been a number of other causes. Equally, the rapid time-scale, rumours, symptoms and possible ‘cures’ could indicate poisoning by person or persons unknown. Did someone take advantage of the temporary darkness and smother her? Did she sink into a Lady Macbeth-style derangement, prompted b
y guilt, just weeks before her husband’s own violent death? In the twenty-first century, it is not possible to know for sure.
Few tributes to Queen Anne remain. Her reign was one of the shortest in English history, lasting only twenty-two months. According to Fabyan, she was a woman of ‘gracious fame, upon whose soul … Jesus have mercy’. Agostino Barbarigo, future Doge of Venice, wrote to Richard III, regretting the loss of his ‘beloved’ consort and exhorting him, ‘endowed with consummate equanimity and marvellous virtues, of your wisdom and grandeur of mind to bear the disaster calmly and resign yourself to the divine will’. According to the Italian, who had never met Anne, she lived a ‘religious and catholic life, and was so adorned with goodness, prudence, and excellent morality, as to leave a name immortal’.3 In the intervening centuries, though, it was Anne’s mortal name that was often overlooked. Her life has been overshadowed by the controversies of Richard’s reign and his death in battle. Today the site of her burial is disputed; perhaps Richard intended to erect a tomb in her honour but he ran out of time. In 1960, the Richard III Society established a memorial plaque on the wall of Westminster Abbey, close to where her remains are thought to lie, inscribed:
Anne Nevill[e] 1456–85, Queen of England, younger daughter of Richard, Earl of Warwick, called the Kingmaker, wife to the last Plantagenet King, Richard III. In person she was seemly, amiable and beauteous … And according to the interpretation of her name Anne full gracious. Requiescat in pace.
What, exactly, was Anne’s contribution to her times? While Richard III has inspired his own cult following, Anne has received far less critical attention. However, the nature of her relationship with her husband can help provide answers to some of the key questions of his accession and reign. More significantly, though, Anne must be allowed to stand alone as a late medieval woman, wife, mother and queen. She deserves to be studied as more than just a foil for the men in her life and as a far more complex individual than a mere pawn of their schemes. Her tenure as queen was so brief and poorly recorded as to make analysis of her achievements difficult. Difficult, but not impossible.
Firstly, as a wife and queen, Anne’s role was to validate her husband in his position. Of course, Richard was king in his own right. As the only surviving son of Richard, Duke of York, following the declared illegitimacy of Edward IV and the invalidity of his marriage, he did not need Anne in order to claim the throne. However, the events of summer 1483 left him vulnerable to gossip, criticism and attack. His regime needed every symbol of validity to demonstrate its pre-eminence and durability, so Richard sought to embed himself at the heart of Westminster by establishing networks of ties by blood, marriage and loyalty. This began as early as his Coronation. The presence of a devoted wife, and queen of long standing, added a further level of respectability. Anne was no insignificant individual in her own right; embodied in her was the memory of Warwick’s status and ‘kingmaking’ activities. If, by implication, she stood beside Richard, so should others who may have doubted his claim and role in the disappearance of the princes. Even today, the question of Richard’s involvement elicits comments that Anne would not have remained loyal to him, had she believed in his guilt, yet this is a modern perspective. Anne had known her husband since they were children and continued to back him once he became king, whatever she may or may not have known. No doubt her own considerable ambition contributed to this, but, more importantly, they presented a powerful union.
Equally, a queen was seen as an indispensable facet of medieval monarchy, tempering her husband’s warlike majesty with charity, mercy and gentleness. As the figurehead of a network of female and juvenile dependants, the queen represented an interface between a divine regime and its subjects. There had not been a double Coronation since that of Edward II and Isabel of France in February 1308. From her role as Duchess of Gloucester, Anne was already known as a sponsor of various religious establishments and the cults of saints, as well as having represented Richard at the York courts. Her political function was as an intermediary, patron of the arts and example of piety. As the embodiment of these, her visible presence at Richard’s side, on occasions such as the Coronations at Westminster and York, the royal progress and Christmases at Westminster, completed what her contemporaries would have sought as the desirable model of a royal family. Thus, her function was a confirmatory one, for Richard the individual and as king.
Secondly, the role of a medieval queen had to encompass motherhood. Anne had already provided Richard with one son, the minimum requirement for the continuation of the dynasty, but the absence of any other surviving children was clearly an issue, as it made Richard’s inheritance as tenuous as the young boy’s life. Yet Anne’s low fertility cannot be assumed. Modern medical studies have ascertained that the responsibility for a lack of fertility in couples can lie with either partner or be an unfortunate consequence of their specific pairing. Richard had fathered at least two illegitimate children but there is no way of knowing what Anne’s levels of fecundity would have been if she were with a different partner. To her husband and his contemporaries, though, the lack of children in a marriage was always attributable to the woman. Through fifteenth-century eyes, Anne had failed in this aspect of her duties as a wife and queen.
The brevity of Anne’s reign makes it difficult to state decisively what model of queenship she provided. During her lifetime, she witnessed the reigns of two other women, both of whom she was related to through marriage. Her mother-in-law, Margaret of Anjou, presented herself as a warrior queen, equal to the task of kingship, which she assumed during the periods of her husband’s illness. The unpopularity of her favourites, coupled with the unruly nature of the armies under their command, made her into a figure of fear for many of her contemporaries. Margaret can hardly be blamed for actively defending her husband and son, and her contemporary warlike queen, Isabella of Castile, attracted epithets such as powerful, forceful and brave when she met rebels in person. One difference was that Isabel was part of a functioning couple, supported by her formidable husband, Ferdinand of Aragon; in England, Margaret was despised for blurring the lines between kingship and queenship. For most of Anne’s life, her sister-in-law Elizabeth Wydeville had worn the crown and made her influence felt through the sphere of family and household. Her undeniable sexual hold over Edward led to accusations of ‘pillow-talk’ and resentment was caused by the advancement of her large and ambitious family. The greatest cause of dislike was her supposedly humble roots and rapid ascendancy to power, which meant her marriage had been conducted in secret. Neither modelled a type of queenship that would have appealed to Anne, as far as her character can be understood. As half of a married couple of ten years’ duration, her position was unusual, as her reign was an extension of an established partnership. Unlike her contemporaries, she had not chosen Richard in expectation of a crown and did not have to undergo the process of integration and acceptance as queen. Nor did she need to define herself as a wife in the public eye, as Margaret and Elizabeth had done. As a result, she and Richard are likely to have approached their rule from a position of mutual understanding and shared ambition. Under different circumstances, Anne Neville could have proved to be a very successful queen.
3. Edward III. King of England from 1327 to 1377, and common ancestor of the warring houses of Lancaster and York. Richard III’s family were descended from his second son, Lionel of Antwerp, through the female line, while Henry VI derived his claim from the third son, John of Gaunt. Anne was his great-great-granddaughter and Richard was his great-grandson. (Author’s collection)
4. Anne de Beauchamp. According to Pevsner, this fifteenth-century corbel in the nave of St Andrew’s church, Chedworth, Gloucestershire, depicts Anne’s mother, Anne de Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick. She was born in 1426 and bore Anne, her last child, at the comparatively advanced age of thirty. (Guy Thornton)
5. Warwick Castle. Anne was born here on 11 June 1456. One of the most wealthy and impressive in the country, there had been a castle on t
his bend of the River Avon since the eleventh century. Warwick inherited it and the title through his wife, after the death of the last Beauchamp earls in the 1440s. (Matthew Wells)
6. St Mary’s church, Warwick. Anne was baptised here in June 1456, within days of her birth. Medieval babies were usually christened as soon as possible, to ensure their salvation, as cases of infant mortality were high. Anne’s ceremony would have been arranged by her godparents, as her mother would not have yet emerged from her confinement. (Colin Sabin)